Return of the super-prison as the Coalition changes tack

A “super-prison” capable of housing 2,000 inmates is to be built along with
four mini-prisons in a departure from Coalition policy which had suggested
that jails are costly and ineffectual.

The latest inspection of the Wandsworth jail raised serious concerns over the safety of prisonersPhoto: PA

By Wesley Johnson, Home Affairs Correspondent

9:47PM GMT 09 Jan 2013

Chris Grayling, the Justice Secretary, unveils plans today to build Britain’s biggest prison, in contrast to his predecessor Kenneth Clarke who claimed jails were expensive and did nothing to prevent criminal behaviour.

Mr Grayling is expected to tell MPs he is starting a feasibility study for the project which would house 2,000 inmates in one jail. Four mini-prisons, with an extra 1,000 places in total, will also be built over the next two years as smaller and more expensive jails are closed, it is understood.

Earlier this week, Mr Grayling said he favoured a system that does not automatically release inmates at a certain point in their sentence regardless of how they have behaved. The Tory minister insisted he would not cut prison places, claiming falling crime rates were partly due to more offenders being locked up.

Nearly two thirds of prisons in England and Wales are overcrowded, with 7,000 more people in jail than the system is designed to hold, research by the Prison Reform Trust found last year.

Some 84,000 inmates were behind bars last Friday, down slightly from the record high of 88,179 at the end of last year after the summer’s riots.

Projections from the Ministry of Justice show the population could rise as high as 90,900 in the next five years.

Sites being considered for the super-jail are understood to be in London and the North West or North Wales.

The plans are likely to cause concerns for prison governors and penal reform groups who claim that large prisons are difficult to control and would result in inmates being “warehoused”.

Britain’s largest jail, the Victorian Wandsworth Prison in south London, can hold 1,665 prisoners while the new Oakwood Prison in Featherstone near Wolverhampton, run by G4S, opened last year with places for 1,605.

An inspection of Wandsworth raised serious concerns, adding there was “no doubt it holds a challenging population with multiple problems”.

Plans to build Britain’s biggest jail will also evoke memories of Labour’s £2.9 billion proposal for three 2,500-capacity Titan jails, which was scrapped in 2009.

Juliet Lyon, of the Prison Reform Trust, said that with crime levels falling “the only reason to revive the debunked idea of Titan prisons would be for political capital”. “It would be a gigantic mistake if the Justice Secretary were to pour taxpayers’ money down the prison-building drain.”